Spell-Check Your Ego at the Door

If you haven't noticed, in yesterday's post, somebody very kindly brought to my attention that I misspelled Jonathan Lethem's name. I was able to fix the 2nd re-covered book, because I still had the psd file, but the 1st re-cover shall remain as is, because I trashed the original file; and so there it stands, alone, as a painful but necessary reminder to me (and others!) of the importance of always checking the spelling of people's names, no matter how sure you may be of their correct spelling, no matter how much you may love that author's/artist's work, just double-check, ok?

Yesterdays' embarrassing goof-up created a great segway into today's post, which I was planning to write about, ironically even before I messed up Lethem's name.

I found out about this story from the forum Readerville, and I just had to share it with the world. Recently a library in the U.S. hired an artist by the name of Maria Alquilar to paint a library mosaic for them, which would contain many names of well known people. Apparently this artist misspelled 11 of those names, including people like Shakespeare, Einstein and Michelangelo. Well, the article goes on to say:

The artist said the names were spelled correctly on her sketches, but she got them wrong as she was doing the piece. She admits noticing "Einstein" was misspelled but choosing to go forward anyway.

"I just wasn't that concerned," she said. "None of us are particularly good spellers anymore because of computers. When you are in a studio full of clay, you don't give it much thought.

The library is willing to pay her another $6,000 to fix the mess, but it's looking like she's not gonna do it, because she's had such negative feedback about her work. In another article about this fiasco I read:

When asked whether she chose the words and names for the work or whether the city provided her with a list, Alquilar took an artistic stance in response. "The art chose the words," she said.

Oh pullleaaaaaase. I don't know where to begin. This artist's ego? Her pretentiousness? Her irresponsibility? Her stupidity? Honey, when an organization or a company commissions you to do a work that has text in it, for your sake, and the sake of the organization, check all the text. A few years back when I had to paint caricatures of famous Canadians on moose for the Moose in the City art show, I also had to paint all their names underneath. The list of names were given to me by the sponsor for the 2 moose I painted for them. I noticed that they had actually misspelled some of the names, and the reason I know this is because I checked every single name myself.

If you would like to read more about this story, check out this article here, and this one here and here. It will be interesting to see how this story unfolds.

Oh and if any of you guys ever notice any more spelling errors, by all means, let me know. But be nice about it, please. You don't wanna mess with this gal's ego.

Comments

[Katharine]

Well, you did ask...

Segue.

[patricia]

Ha ha ha.

Shit.

[The Tour Marm]

Hi!

What a terrific site!

I'm new to the blogsphere and came upon your site trying to find an appropriate illustration for a new posting: Challenges in Curriculum Development. I was wondering it I could get permission (with attribution) to use your #!!* scribe?

I'm originally from New York and for a while worked with John F. Fleming (a protege of A.S.W. Rosenbach) preparing rare books and manuscripts for auction.

Please visit! My posting on Poetry for School and Soul (Feb 18) might be of interest to you.

Cheers!

The Tour Narm